Usually, when you encounter an item with no definitive price tag, it is because the item is significantly overpriced. When a customer must ask for the price, the salesman can estimate wealth, gullibility, and many other things before finding a way to screw the customer. It also provides an opportunity to sell the customer, rather than merely counting on the item and its price to convince the buyer.

In simple terms, forcing another to be open about his wants, and being closed off on your own, gives a man a decided bargaining advantage.

Lately, we’ve seen this at work with Antifa, BLM, #TheResistance, and other assorted left-wing groups. Grievances are produced, from slavery, to the plight of Native Americans, to American foreign adventures in the Middle East. Being honest with ourselves, some of these grievances have at least a historical merit to them. But for such leftist groups, the price for burying the grievance is obfuscated behind buzzwords and jargon. We must dismantle the cisheteropatriarchy, we must check our privilege, we must become a positive advocate for change. Everything from microaggressions to cultural appropriation are cited as examples of these things.

But I ask, what change?

Allow me to step into the shoes of one of Babylon 5’s villains, Mr. Morden, and ask the question: “what do you want?”

Well, leftists? What do you want? What is your price for putting away identity politics and your incessant portrayals of right-wing racism, sexism, homophobia, and islamophobia? These portrayals have silenced some of us, enraged others, and sent many conservatives running for the political closet. And once there, they still voted right-wing. Thus we now have one Donald J. Trump, despite all predictions to the contrary.

Some of us, like the esteemed Francis at Liberty’s Torch,have made peace with the incessant accusations and said something to the effect of “if you think that means I’m a racist then fine, I’m a racist. Now what?” Others, like myself, maintain that the portrayal of racism as the greatest of all evils is a mistake, dredged up because of the relative historical freshness of Nazi evil, and America’s own struggles with slavery. These evils most Americans are familiar with, but judging from the proliferation of Che Guevara t-shirts, the evils of Communism are less well understood.

And so racism becomes the number one evil in America, a sort of 21st century red scare, except there are even fewer to play the part of the reds (and many more actual reds).

All of that is immaterial, however. What is the end goal of the leftist? What does he want? What does his ideal America (or world, for those of a globalist persuasion) look like? Who gets to live there? What becomes of us and others who do not fit this progressive vision of the future?

When asked, leftists are often quite silent on the price. Just today, one explained that I should google the matter (never mind that I’ve exhausted google as a resource for this) because she didn’t want to “perform free emotional labor” on my behalf. Naming the price is now something that, in itself, costs money. Imagine if you asked the salesman what the price of a thing was, and he replied “you have to pay me to find out.”

Like the little psychological trick of decreasing sticker shock with slick salesmanship, the left understands that by hiding the price, they increase the possibility of ripping off some gullible idiot. Namely, us. And it works well enough on some. Enough that the thought of being accused of racism or prejudice is enough to elicit outright fear in many, not just an answer to the question.

Once an accusation of racism is leveled, very little is sufficient to dismiss it. Do you have many friends of the race in question? RationalWiki tells you that this is insufficient (after all, Hitler liked one Jew). You’re still a racist. What if, instead, you married a black woman, loved her and her family, and had a child with her? Well, you’re still a racist, because as some Puppy-kickers explained on Facebook (they have since deleted the posts in question, but I saved a screenshot, and Brad Torgersen can confirm it), black pussy doesn’t mean you aren’t racist. The Puppy-kickers even made this into a t-shirt. This argument was recently resurrected on Twitter by Talib Kweli Greene where he explained that if you marry an Indian woman, you’re still a racist, you just like Indian pussy.

So your friends, family, and relationships are dismissed. The accusation still stands. And remember, you are guilty unless proven innocent. And to prove your innocence, you must embrace leftist politics. That is the only accepted coin. And even by doing that, you would still have to abase yourself thoroughly and completely. Meanwhile, a woman who murdered her own 4 year old son applied to Harvard, and was denied. Naturally, this had something to do with racism, according to Vox.com. Of course it has little or nothing to do with being a convicted murderer of a child.

Ultimately, the choice is this: convert to leftism, or risk being tarred as a racist with no possible way to prove otherwise, because you are guilty until proven innocent, and all evidence except leftist political sentiments will be summarily dismissed as insufficient.

Meanwhile, a reasonable man might be inclined to ask the price of buying this weapon off the left. What would it take for them to put it away?

Their rants and raves on this matter are difficult to parse. Ta-Nehisi Coates penned a long piece in support of reparations, and when I first read it I expected a concrete answer to the question “what do you want?” Instead, we were treated to a historical lecture on the plight of blacks in America. We already knew this. Everybody knows about slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination against blacks. How can anyone not know? The media has been bombarding us with these things for as long as I’ve been alive. And if the media wasn’t, BLM sure has been making a rather more raw effort at doing so. We get it. These things happened, and blacks got a raw deal.

What I want is a price. What are the demands? What do they really want?

I suspect the reason the demands aren’t named is that the sticker shock is likely to be quite mighty. I recall reading some time ago (and I can’t remember where presently, but if any of my readers know, please reply in the comments) that one black leader suggested a one-time payoff of $1 million to each black citizen. That bill would come out to approximately $36 trillion, approximately double the GDP of the United States, and likely an impossible sum. But to be honest, I suspect the left’s real demands would be much more expensive, and involve something much more Marxist than a massive one-time payment. The left would probably want to ensure the racist right-wingers never got to express their racism again, and would need to be actively suppressed. Somebody has to be the kulaks when things go bad, after all.

In the end, it’s just like Barack Obama’s campaign of hope and change. What change? How much will it cost? Hopeful for whom? These are questions the left leaves unanswered. There are never any (accurate) price tags on their merchandise. And so, I’ve no interest in buying.

The story is pretty simple, a British father who lost his wife to cancer years before took his 13 year old daughter on a short little vacation. He booked a room at the Travelodge, and went to check in, and the only type of room they had left was a double room, so he said he’d take it…

…then a whole dramatic escapade ensues where the Travelodge manager interrogates the customer, calls the police, and accuses the father of being a pedo. Police take the child away from her father, and interrogate her as to whether not he is her father.

It’s absurd that a meddling hotel manager would do this, of course, but at the same time consider the blindness the British authorities had toward the Rotherham rape cases. If the supposed perp is a Muslim or non-white, the practice is largely ignored out of fear that the authorities will be tarred as racist. If a British man takes his daughter on a vacation, he is subjected to ludicrous accusations with absolutely no evidence whatsoever behind them. Then both father and daughter are interrogated by the police.

This is rather like the absurdity of old grandmothers being subjected to random deep TSA screenings.

I’ve taken to calling this phenomenon Reverse Profiling, insofar as whatever the common sense profiling might suggest, the authorities must do the exact opposite. If, for instance, purple Martians were known to be more likely to commit random acts of terrorism, those same purple Martians must be let in without any screening whatsoever. And if old grandmothers were known to rarely, if ever, commit said acts, the book must be thrown at as many of them as possible.

The hotel chain, meanwhile, crafts lies to try and justify their actions:

Mr Darwell complained and says that the company are now falsely claiming that he tried to pay by cash in order to justify their suspicion.

‘They say I insisted on paying cash when I arrived but its rubbish. I had already paid by credit card before I even arrived,’ he added.

The increasing involvement of companies in policing and politics is starting to become quite worrisome to me. They are becoming a cog in demands of the State. And meanwhile, SJWs make demands that companies embrace political correctness, that is to say Leftism. We like in a bizarre world wherein Capitalism is, itself, being bent to the will of Leftism. It’s beyond crony Capitalism and into some kind of bizarre hybrid not entirely dissimilar from Chinese Market Communism, or whatever they are calling their system these days.

‘Our colleagues are trained based on current national guidelines from the NSPCC, the police and other agencies and in the past, hotel team actions have led to successful intervention to protect young people.

The government said to jump… and even in a blatant case of obvious misjudgment, they jumped. A decree comes down from on high that hotels should do (x), no matter how ridiculous or stupid it may be, and off they go.

I bet dollars to donuts that the hotel manager wouldn’t have said a damn thing if the father had been a Pakistani and his daughter had been in a burkha. And just who do you think the odds favor in cases of kiddy diddling? After all, Mohammed himself was okay with the practice, so long as they were older than 9.

Imagine, even, that the father had been, instead, a mother. Feminists would have crawled out of the woodwork to make this an instance of sexism, and proof of the evil Patriarchy. But they’ll be silent for this. No outrage, because deep down, most of them would probably think the man deserved it because he was male.

But let’s be honest, if it were a mother and her child, nobody would have batted an eyelash anyway. Only white men are evil, after all, didntcha know?

Like this:

Sarah Hoyt wrote an excellent piece this morning describing the Leftist view of racism as, in essence, fear of the stranger. Fear of the stranger contains a strongly rational component, in that, as she puts it:

In pre-human times, with many bands and tribelets living close enough for kids to stray, the name for a kid who thought that his family or strangers were equivalent was — at least if we go by how our closest relatives, the chimps, treat young from other bands — “dinner.”

Oh sure, in times of stress and famine, the chances that your own band would tuck in were fairly high, but still the chances that dear old mom would eat you were not nearly as high as that a stranger would eat you.

In other words, the in-group was more likely to protect and cherish you — and less likely to eat you — than the out-group. So fear of the stranger was rational, and selected for.

That isn’t to say you cannot regard someone of a different background as part of the in-group. Over time, as individuals prove themselves and you get to know them, the fear of the stranger will ease because the individual is no longer a stranger to you.

My in-laws are of Cuban ancestry, and their culture is somewhat different from the one in which I was raised. But having lived with it for near to a decade now, it is very familiar to me. It is not strange or odd.

But therein lies the distinction. You get to know someone first. And if they prove themselves, then they are no longer regarded as strangers.

Instead of rationally determining which individuals and groups are good, and offer no threat to you, then acting accordingly, Leftists demand that you display a knee-jerk reaction every time fear of the stranger comes, and immediately accept that person into your home, regardless of what they say or do.

The Syrian migrant/refugee business is a great case in point, as is illegal immigration. The Left thinks it a crime to ask the stranger what his business is, and why he wants to enter our community. They think it is a crime to not immediately give the stranger every possible honor, a seat at our table, a home in our village, a position of power in our councils, and then demand nothing from him in return. We don’t even demand that he obey our laws, or speak our language.

It’s absolutely insane.

Their position is beyond stupid. Any species that acted this way in the wild would be rendered extinct within a generation. They would be eaten by everyone. They would be gullible fools, easy snacks for any predators.

A Leftist sees a sketchy van roll into his neighborhood, and in order to virtue signal his moral superiority over us, he immediately dismisses his fear of the stranger, and offers his children to the sketchy van owner, heedless of any threat or danger (because recognizing any threat is discriminatory). He asks the sketchy van owner to come into his home, eat at his table, and give company to his wife. It doesn’t even matter if the van owner speaks his language. In fact, the more difference he has from you, the stranger he is to you, the better for the moral preening.

Any hesitation to do this immediately and reflexively is racism/sexism/homophobia/islamophobia/whatever.

It’s knee-jerk moral preening, and if it weren’t moderated by a fair amount of Rightist common sense, it would have already destroyed the country, and then the Leftists themselves, in short order.

There’s a reason, of course, why Stalinists shot gullible true believers. They didn’t want those idiots around either. They were useful for destroying the old order — because they bring civilizational extinction wherever they achieve power — but they are useless for any other purpose.

Leftist anti-racism is a knee-jerk reaction to a survival instinct. If the choice is dismissing the stranger, or doing whatever the Left is doing, dismissing is the superior choice, because it at least concedes survival. The best position, of course, is a healthy skepticism of the stranger, until he proves himself adequately, upon which he is no longer strange to you.

But nothing other than civilizational hara kiri is acceptable to the political Left.

Like this:

I posted this in reply to a woman’s assertion that everybody is a racist because everybody is biased. But, of course, she naturally claimed she had less bias, and was a good Progressive, and thus excused herself as less racist than evil Trump voters:

She sees a technicality as a greater truth. Technically speaking, everyone is biased because they are not gods, they must make assumptions based on incomplete data because they cannot be fully objective about the entirety of the known universe. Only Progs are foolish enough to think such objectivity is possible in a human being.

The question becomes, are the assumptions 1) unfounded, 2) pathological in some way, and 3) measurable at any kind of net level? If, for instance, a woman grasps her purse when a black man in a hoodie walks by late at night, is she unfounded in her assumption? No, she isn’t. Statistically speaking, she’s more likely to be assaulted by a man fitting that description than, say, a Chinese guy dressed in a bespoke tailored suit.

Your opponent would consider such a thing to be racism, or at least “implicit bias.” And that may be technically true, but it’s also a fallacy. She’s missing the forest for the trees.

Also, we have to ask if the bias is pathological. If said woman clutches her purse, true, she may have bias. But does clutching her purse harm the black man in a hoodie? Not a bit. Maybe the bias would be pathological if a perfectly qualified black man in a suit and tie was at her desk for an interview, and she was an HR rep, and she dismissed him because his skin was darker than hers. But let’s be honest here: that’s far more likely to win him extra points in our current political climate, than to detract from his hiring chances.

Finally, is the bias measurable? One of the fascinating things most Progs fail to realize, is that bias often cancels out. Sure, a white person will have biases. But so does the black person. How does that figure into the calculus? And sometimes the biases people have are not in favor of those like them. Even if you’re a tall, talented white basketball player, you’ll have to fight the bias that blacks are better than whites at basketball (a bias, mind you, that’s not without some truth to it – but most biases often contain some truth). That’s even when the coach is white!

We can eliminate obviously unfounded and pathological discrimination when the government is the purveyor of those things. That’s how we eliminated slavery, Jim Crow, and a host of similar ills. We can prohibit the government from having the power to do those things.

But can we (or should we even if we could) control the minds of each American, so as to fully remove from him each grain of bias? Every assumption? Each generalization? No. It’s not possible. It’s a fool’s errand. It can never be, and the price for attempting it is the fabric of our entire civilization. And even the dumbest hick in redneckistan instinctively knows that at some level. Only the intellectual can fool himself into believing otherwise. Only the intellectual has such a high opinion of his own wisdom, that he believes himself to be the equal of God, who alone could do such a thing.

It is, in an odd way, a sort of cosmic Dunning-Kruger effect, where these people fail to understand how small and insignificant they really are.

Like this:

So a long time ago, in a universe far, far away… I was in High School. Okay, 20 years ago. But whatever. I remember sitting in Spanish class while the teacher yapped to the administrators about some such thing, during which the class predictably descended into chaos. Theoretically, we were supposed to be discussing certain words relating to government, but somehow the topic went into politics, and not, I should note, in Spanish.

Somebody accused me of being “Republican” and suddenly conversation stopped, and all eyes turned to me. Now, since we were all in high school at the time, saying one is a member of a political party was academic at best. But in those days, as now, being called “Republican” might as well have meant being called a Neo-Nazi. I said that I was too young to be in a party, but that I considered myself somewhere in the middle, politically. I was not really Republican, but neither was I a Democrat.

“So you’re against helping people,” the accuser replied. To him, membership in the Democratic party was a prerequisite to not being a hateful bigot. And bear in mind that this was the 90s. I imagine today’s schools suffer much worse, now that Social Justice rhetoric has had more time to breed. We went back and forth for a time, and it was a remarkably civil debate for being a bunch of high schoolers talking about political matters they knew nothing about. But those inclined to watch the debate nodded and agreed that if you’re not a Democrat, you’re at least suspect in this matter.

And so the notion stuck with me. “You’re against helping people.” It’s the most common rhetorical charge laid upon anyone who is not a radical Leftist. We can go on about how the Leftists are wrong about this, and that we believe that it is best to help people help themselves, and that Capitalism is a wave that lifts all boats, and so on and so forth. But it never really penetrates, does it? All such replies fall on deaf ears, and even knowing these things as I do, I have a hard time considering my replies equal to the task of dismantling this myth. Matching dialectic to rhetoric doesn’t work.

But there is a response to this, one that is equally effective, equally simple, and perhaps even stronger, for it correlates with human nature well enough.

No. I’m against helping you.

That’s right. Does it sound harsh? Perhaps it is, but remember, they accused you of an untruth whereas you, at least, responded with a truth. I like helping people. I have helped my brother on occasion, and my father more frequently. I have helped friends, and they have helped me. I have done favors for my in-laws, and given money to friends when they needed help. Most of those in my life know that I can be counted on reliably even in the worst of times. I’m not against helping people as a principle. I’m against helping accusatory assholes. I’m against helping people I don’t know, people I have no connection to.

Or, aimed at my accuser, I’m against helping you.

If SJWs say that I’m against helping black people, or women, or gay people… wrong. I have helped people who are black, I have helped women, and I have helped gay people. But the difference is, those I have helped are people I know, people in my life in some capacity or another, and whom I know will help me in turn (or who may have already helped me in some capacity), should I find myself in a bad place. No, I’m just against helping you. If Black Lives Matter tells me that I’m against helping blacks… wrong. I’m against helping your group, specifically.

If a welfare queen with 15 kids (yes, one exists here in Tampa — she was big news for awhile) says “I want you to help me,” I will say no. And if someone holds a vote to determine if the government should reach into my pocket, and take money from me, and give it to her to help her, my vote will be no. I’m against helping you. If someone else wishes to help the woman, then that is their business. I will decline.

It’s not because you are poor, or black, or a woman, or whatever other myriad of identities you may or may not have. It is because I don’t know you, you are not in my life in any capacity, and I’m pretty certain you would not help me, were the situation reversed. So no, I’m against helping you, specifically.

I prioritize helping my family, and my friends, and business partners, and so on, over helping random people I don’t know, and with whom I have no dealings. Yet even so, there are times I have chosen to do that, on my own account. I donate time and money to a local cancer patient charity, because it pleases me to do so. But that is my business, and you don’t get to force me to do it. Indeed, if I were forced to give money to the charity, the act would lose its luster for me. I am for helping that group, specifically.

So next time an SJW says something like that to you “you’re against (x)” just shake your head sadly, and tell them that they are mistaken. There are plenty of people in the world whom you would help, some whom you may even give your life for. It is just simply that the SJW and his preferred victim groups are not among them. “I like helping people,” you might say, “I’m just against helping you. Sorry, bub.”

Like this:

You know, I see a lot of stupid shit on the Internet. I consider it a service to scour the bottom of the intellectual barrel in search of prime examples of Social Justice idiocy. And so I have a relatively high tolerance for stupidity, borne out of necessity. But there are times even I recoil from the eldritch horrors I find in the festering, wretched hives of Social Justice.

Reality is racist. Seriously. That’s the argument this captain of idiocy is spewing from her mouth-hole. I’ve taken dumps from which more intellectual truths could be divined.

Yes, the horror from the elder days of Marxist assholery has manifested anew in the form of Miss (I’m sure she’s not a Mrs., who the hell would put a ring on a finger attached to a creature this stupid?) Emily Crockett, Social Justice Warrior and minion of the land of Vox.com. Let’s fisk this sewage and learn what we may.

“Warning: Pokémon Go is a death sentence if you’re a black man,” Omari Akil argued in an essay at Medium over the weekend.

You know, I’m not exactly a fan of this Pokemon Go shit. I’ve seen full grown men (at least in body, anyway) wandering around like drooling idiots from a B-rate zombie movie, looking for Pikachu, or whatever. “Braaaaaaaains.” No, no brains to be found here, I’m afraid. But to call it a death sentence for black men? What do you even say to that sort of stupidity? Do black men spontaneously combust upon loading the app onto their phones? I found Jigglypuff! *BLAM*.

It’s an idiocy that has exceeded the dumbassery of lesser beings. It is the sort of intellectual diarrhea that could only be spawned from the mind of someone who thinks themselves educated and enlightened, for no lesser form of ignorance is sufficient to produce it. No, the sky isn’t blue, says the intellectual. Because blue is racist, since cops wear blue sometimes. If my ass had an ass, and that ass expelled a load of fecal matter which, itself, was able to take a dump, only then would you reach the level of mental sewage this creature has, somehow, managed to expel from her mouth, distill into typed form, and display on the Internet.

Does she take pictures of her turds swirling in the bowl too, I wonder? And does Vox.com post that, also? It would be a step up from this.

It’s a startling, even extreme-sounding claim. How could a virally popular smartphone game featuring adorable Japanese cartoon characters possibly endanger the lives of black men?

It doesn’t, at least no more so than it endangers the lives of other idiots wandering around like drunken zombies looking for Jigglypuff in between the legs of an Atlanta stripper at 2 in the morning.

But Akil’s explanation makes a lot of sense, and it is incredibly sobering. Akil says he rushed to download the game and try it out but quickly realized that its “augmented reality” interface also replicates the systemic racial inequalities of our regular, un-augmented reality:

Yes. I want you, dear reader, to let this one sink in. Pardon the shit analogies, both literally and figuratively, but I know of nothing more appropriate for this bile. This is a special sort of turd, the sort that, despite its foulness, and the gut-wrenching pain that led to its expulsion, must be grudgingly admired for its level of fecal perfection. What disgustingly unhealthy excuse for nourishment produced it? How, indeed, did something so flawlessly vile and nasty come out of a human being? What birthing pains were labored in its creation?

How, indeed, can any human being come to the conclusion that reality itself is racist? Let it sink in. Admire the perfect idiocy of this thing. Take it in. And then wonder how this human being can manage to put on pants in the morning, much less tie her own shoes.

Akil’s logic is simple: Black men are stopped more often by police for unusual or suspicious behavior. More police stops means a greater risk of violent interactions, and black men are disproportionately killed by police. Pokémon Go causes people to do unusual things in public spaces. Therefore, Pokémon Go poses a real risk to black men in America.

Why, I’m sure that police will be mortified to see an idiot staring into his cellphone, looking at stupid shit. Indeed, this could not possibly have ever happened before someone dumped this game onto the market, right?

Anyway, what does this tentacled, eldritch vagina want to do about it? If you’re black, no Pokemon for you?

A lot of people are making jokes about how the National Security Agency probably created Pokémon Go as a spy tool. Others are genuinely concerned about the potential ramifications for privacy and civil liberties:

Well, privacy concerns have some legitimacy here. I don’t want to install this crap on my phone either. But what the hell does this have to do with her premise that reality is racist, therefore no Pokemon for black people?

Another Pokémon Go user had a story about police and racial profiling in a viral post on Imgur. He said he’s a white man in his 40s who started bonding over Pokémon Go in a public park with two young black men — and was promptly questioned by police who thought they might be conducting a drug deal.

It ended happily, with the cop downloading the app himself. But it’s unsettling to think about how easily it could have gone the other way.

So an unconfirmed personal account of a police officer questioning people, who then decides to be interested in the game. THE TERROR. THE HORROR! JIM CROW! SLAVERY! POLICE BRUTALITY! How in the hell do these sorts of people manage to go anywhere, or do anything? Does Emily Crockett shiver in her boots when a policeman says “good morning”? Does she quake with fear if somebody talks to a black person in the park? Does tying her shoelaces fill her with dread and fears of racist oppression? Why, the shoelaces might be white!

But I suppose this is par for the course from people who consider “nice dress” to be rape, or who think that carting mattresses around campus, upon which you later decide to do a porn shoot, is somehow showing the eeeeevil patriarchy what’s what.

The level of stupidity these people call upon goes beyond the merely slow, or uneducated. It is a special brand of willful, knowing ignorance. And in the normal course of human affairs, this might be called a contradiction. A paradox of stupidity, as it were. And yet, there it is, before our very eyes, crawling up from the deep crevices of Karl Marx’s anus. Pokemon is racist. Reality is racist. Everything is racism, sexism, and homophobia. All of creation, the universe, and space-time itself has turned against black people. And for proof, we are supplied with a personal account of a cop asking about a crappy game from a couple of guys in the park.

I’ve seen more convincing fake-outs and exaggerations in soccer games.

I am reminded of the idiot who said calling a singularity a “black hole” is evidence of systemic racism in the academic community. Say what? No, the only singularity here is the hole inside your skull, which has sucked all possible intelligence into a parallel universe, and left nothing in its wake.

I took a breath this morning. Racist. My friend has a black car. Racist. Somebody right now is trying to find Pikachu in his toilet, and only succeeded in finding the floating relatives of one Miss Emily Crockett. Social Justice is an example of what one man termed a “Shit Midas”, a being which turns whatever it touches into excrement.

Miss Emily Crocket, congratulations on your achievement as Idiot of the Week, and Official Shit Midas of Vox.com. I proudly present to you four Golden Turds in recognition of this supreme achievement of cosmic stupidity.